So was anyone going to tell me my home state has a god damn werewolf, or was I supposed to learn this from a Google search of creepy mythological figures?

The Beast of Bray Road is, well, a beast that heails from Elkhorn, Wisconsin, a town about 45 miles southwest of Milwaukee. This first sighting of it allegedly happened in 1936 on Bray Road, hence the name. It wouldn’t be until the 1980s and 90s that sightings really took off, however.

Basically people started noticing that there were some weird things going on around town, most notably unusually deep scratches on cars and tree trunks. Oh, and also a bunch of mutilated animal corpses showing up in the area. Which, honestly, is really the creepiest part of this to me.

Then some people reported sightings of the creature, both at night and during the day, often running though nearby farmland in pursuit of prey. The most notable one I found, though, came from a woman who claimed to have hit the beast with her car. Another motorist claimed to have seen it at the side of the road, munching on some fresh roadkill. It also apparently looked directly at him, which honestly, based on how I saw it described, would cause me to shit my pants.

Which brings us to the description. Most depictions are of a 6-7 foot tall hirsute humanoid with the head of a wolf or a bear, and creepy, glowing red eyes. Some descriptions are a bit more Bigfoot-like. I, personally, prefer the former, as werewolves are a bit scarier to me than Sasquatch, probably because I don’t think werewolves have been in any beef jerky ads.

Anyway, the Beast of Bray Road has shown up in pop culture, having been featured in a number of paranormal TV episodes. There are also a couple of movies about the subject, The Beast of Bray Road (2005), and The Bray Road Beast (2018). Plus there’s a book written by a local journalist named Linda Godfrey. That one is called The Beast of Bray Road: Tailing Wisconsin’s Werewolf.

Now, as with a number of cryptids, there are some possible non-supernatural explanations for this phenomenon. The most common on is that it’s simply an unusually large gray wolf, which, while not common, aren’t entirely heard of in the area. Other explanations could be a very large dog (like a Newfoundland), or just a bear with mange.

So that, friends, was the Beast of Bray Road. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’m going to check out that book I mentioned earlier in the post.

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